


Sympathy for the Devil

by Ram92



Series: Singing in the rain [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: And don't call him Young man, BAMF Number Five | The Boy, Gen, Have some sympathy and some taste, I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, It's Five after all, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Rolling Stones get myself, So get him his damn coffee, Sympathy for the Devil, When after all it was you and me, some strong language, song-fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24537625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ram92/pseuds/Ram92
Summary: 'When the Handler came walking through the rubble and asked for my name, I simply answered.<< Number Five. >>She smirked with a light in her eyes that was supposed to look clever.<< A code name already, you definitely know how to play. >> she said. << You’ll find yourself at home with us. >>And I did.'Sweet Number Five has seen some shit, but he doesn't really have time to complain about it.The apocalypse is coming, and we all need a good plan. And he's good at that. He's the best.So just give him a decent cup of coffee, will you?
Series: Singing in the rain [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106357
Comments: 4
Kudos: 62





	Sympathy for the Devil

_Please allow me to introduce myself  
I'm a man of wealth and taste  
I've been around for a long, long year  
Stole many a man's soul to waste_

When the Handler came walking through the rubble and asked for my name, I simply answered.

<< Number Five. >>

She smirked with a light in her eyes that was supposed to look clever.

<< A code name already, you definitely know how to play. >> she said. << You’ll find yourself at home with us. >>

And I did.

I can’t even count how many I’ve killed. But I was good at it. Track them down to the bare minimum, and kill it. Fixing time, correcting history. I was never a butcher, though. I am still a Hargreeves after all. I know how to play, and I can do it with style. As my hair turned from grey to white, nobody would suspect the elegant old man strolling down the lawn, a rifle hidden in the black umbrella tucked under his arm.

_Pleased to meet you  
Hope you guess my name  
But what's puzzling you  
Is the nature of my game_

Luther couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t understand.

He’s a killer himself, even though he never really realized this. He’s the one who would throw people out of the windows as a little kid, rocketing adult bodies in the sky as other kids could throw a ball. But he was never there to see them landing. He barely noticed their internal organs scattered on the pavement in a puddle of fresh blood. And he could always tell himself it was for the best. That they had deserved it.

Many killers are like this, I found. Most of them.

I am not. I am not a killer. I kill people. That’s different.

I’ve got reasons. I’ve got aims. I try to keep it down to the bare necessary.

So that Dolores would approve.

_I stuck around St. Petersburg  
When I saw it was a time for a change  
Killed the czar and his ministers  
Anastasia screamed in vain_

_I rode a tank  
Held a general's rank  
When the blitzkrieg raged  
And the bodies stank_

The years passed by. It was Dolores who kept track. It’s all a bit more difficult when you keep jumping around through time and space. Plus, I had something else in the back of my mind. Always running, always working, always thinking over and over the same factors again and again.

The screaming and the blood sprays were a little distracting at first, but it took me surprisingly little time to get used to it. Well, I say surprisingly, but everything tends to get in a different perspective after you’ve spent over forty years roaming in the leftovers of the apocalypse, I guess.

When the apocalypse is your home.

I had my little missions, a suitcase, a scroll in a box and a new jump down in history. Some shots and shouting, while I read my newspaper looking for clues.

Then I used to come home, kiss Dolores on her cheek and get back to my equations.

The Commission was free to think that I was working for them. I was just biding my time. I was collecting information. I was calculating my own equation.

_I watched with glee  
While your kings and queens  
Fought for ten decades  
For the gods they made_

_I shouted out  
Who killed the Kennedys?  
When after all  
It was you and me_

When the time came, I was ready.

1963, November, clear sky in Dallas. It was time to jump again. No suitcase this time.

The big jump. The one Dad thought I wasn’t ready for. And I wasn’t, back then.

A blueish electric cloud appeared before me. My wrist was shaking to keep it under my control, and a fire extinguisher came out of it. I grinned looking at their stupid faces behind the portal. My idiotic siblings. Still alive and looking dumb.

I stepped into it.

It tickled. It hurt. It got under my skin and turned me inside out.

I’m not coming home this time, Dolores.

I’m breaking my contract.

I’m going home. I’m going back to the Academy.

_Just as every cop is a criminal  
And all the sinners saints  
As heads is tails  
Just call me Lucifer  
'Cause I'm in need of some restraint_

What Luther can’t grasp with that mass of cells and blood he prides himself to call a brain, is that everybody has got their own reasons.

Everybody has got a plan.

What I have, though, is the ability of making good ones. And now I need one good enough to trick the Commission, avert the apocalypse and save all our super-powered asses. And quickly. And some coffee wouldn’t hurt.

Call me evil, if it makes you feel more comfortable but all I am is practical. And I had really hoped you all would have grown into something a little more useful than this by now.

I’m telling you, the apocalypse is not some fairy tale anymore. It’s coming in seven days and it’s coming to kill you.

You, mighty Number One, and all what’s left of the Academy. You die in it.

_So if you meet me  
Have some courtesy  
Have some sympathy, and some taste  
Use all your well-learned politesse  
Or I'll lay your soul to waste_

I don’t even know why I’m doing this.

Getting the whole Commission to hunt me down and try to kill me. Honestly, I was doing fine right there on my own.

I guess the apocalypse, the old age, Dolores... something in all of that must have made me soft.

Or maybe it was just the hope of getting some good coffee in the morning. You cannot even begin to guess how difficult it is to keep it together when you wake up for forty years with the taste of canned beans and boiled water. When alcohol is the only thing that hasn’t turned sour.

So, get me some decent coffee, will you? While I find a way to save all of humanity from its impeding, well-deserved and catastrophic doom. Before the moon bursts into pieces and comes crashing on us all.

_Pleased to meet you  
Hope you guessed my name_

_But what's puzzling you  
Is the nature of my game_

My name is Number Five and I am a Hargreeves.

I outlived the apocalypse. I travelled through time. I killed people. I made history again and again. And now I’m back to save my family and, possibly, the world along with it.

And if anybody calls me ‘young man’ just one more time, I swear to God, I might lose my temper. Well, that would solve the mystery of who caused the apocalypse, at least.

_Tell me, sweetie, what's my name_


End file.
